


The Melting Plague

by deathwailart



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abandoned Village, Apocalyptic Log, Blood, Body Horror, Death, Gen, Mild Gore, Plague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 11:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Burn it all before it burns you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Melting Plague

**Author's Note:**

> I was prompted by seerofdoom on tumblr with ‘the melting plague’. I ended up writing this as a story of codex entry, something I might work into another one of my stories later down the road when I have time. This really ended up very different from my original idea for the story.

It crept in slowly at the time of year when the sniffles and coughs had already taken hold. That time of year where it was dark when people got up and left to go about their lives, the days short and made all the darker for the foul weather that took hold, ferocious rain lashing windows, howling winds felling trees or frosty mornings that stole breath away. Autumn chill, damp, everyone huddled together to keep warm with fires burning at all hours, the smoke blackening the walls. Packed in close, the animals of the fields brought into the tiny homes to keep them alive with families sharing a bed; illness spread quickly usually, jumping from one family member to the next, from house to house. But this illness was different, apt really for the name it would later be given when it defied any sort of rules the healers had devised decades ago.   
  
When it began, it began as the consumption did with blood and clots being coughed up but a damn strong cough, rattling and hacking with the same wheeze at the end of a fit as whooping cough. It struck down the old or very ill first, the healers blaming it on a very bad cough, some bug that had to have come in with strangers passing through their village as all such strange instances came with anyone foreign arriving or settling down. Some babes were afflicted with a fever, little bodies unable to cope no matter how many cold baths they were given, a few young mothers following after they bled and bled until they were ashen. In driving rain and biting frost the men of the village dug deep graves, wrapping loved ones, strangers, faces known for years in their burial shrouds. A bad autumn, it was universally agreed, all of them wishing one another well and that good health would come with the new year for surely it was deserved. They counted themselves fortunate that the animals still lived, that the harvests had been plentiful and that so far the hale and hearty among them had their health. The god-fearing wondered what they had done to upset their creator so that he would strike down so many innocents. Some said it was to spare the dead the hard winter to come, a winter that would have killed them slowly otherwise.  
  
The mornings grew darker. The sickness still claimed a life or two but it was not like other things that had ravaged in the past like poxes, flux, fevers or cholera and so the healers shook their heads, told people to keep warm and to report any strange maladies straight away, keeping rooms shut off in the healing house for anyone who caused concern. The rain lessened as the mornings became crisp and despite having to bundle up more, no one complained - better to be cold and dry than soaking wet all day when working. The only ones who raised complaint were the ones who still had graves to dig, the ground hard to break beneath spades. Everyone wanted the deaths to be over, already far more than many previous years with no outbreak they could pinpoint. Mostly though the people tried to get on with their lives, with the business of mourning if they had to, pretending that there was not something to be afraid of. A fear where anyone was viewed with suspicion, as if Death himself stood behind them, a hand upon their shoulder even if the young becoming ill was still rare.  
  
But then it changed. The cows, the sheep, the pigs, they began to bleed. Their ears, eyes and noses all ran red. The flesh they butchered - there was no other choice as the smoked meats and grains would have to last them until the new season - and preserved or ate. Perhaps this was what let it spread though none knew how it truly took hold but later, when the last few beasts were watched carefully they noticed the heat that rose off them, steaming in cold air. Soon it spread. A fever began, sudden and wild with the victims howling when they were awake, trapped in fever dreams when awake or asleep, twitching and convulsing. All casting off heat like a furnace, the sweat pouring out of them; the best way to go was then from dehydration or drowning when gulping for much needed water that ended up in the lungs. Anyone complaining of being too hot was sent to the healers but then the healers began to fall ill, struggling through their fevers to treat anyone they could, determined not to leave the good village folks to suffer alone and in fear. The priest and clergy said it was Satan, that the town was full of sinners who had to be purged so that they would not spread their evil to the good folk. It was mostly the young women afflicted who were carried down to the river that ran through their village, everyone clamouring and wailing, taken down to the river to be thrown in and held under, thrashing. Some drew others in with them in their struggles and as they screamed, blood swirled through the water the way it did with the cattle.  
  
Not all went to the healers. Some elected to pray, to force themselves upright sure that devotion to the Lord would see them cleansed of their affliction but it was not to be so. Exhaustion felled them, rendering them catatonic until they simply expired, some coughing but unable to wake, drowning in their own blood as it began to leak out of every orifice and from beneath their nails and scalp. Again the lucky. The fever fell back into something manageable if anyone survived and those hale and hearty young once thought to be blessed had the strength to recover. Their skin blistered, great huge welts that held not salty fluid but blood, the kind that bled for hours. They complained of a fire within that could not be felt, clawed at their skin and tried to strip off their clothes, attempting to escape. The bloody dead, some called them, making the sign of the cross as they staggered and moaned. Forever sweating blood, trembling and saying that their bones ached until they could not move, collapsing where they were to be carried inside, unable to sleep, unable to move. Breathing only a rattle with a foam of blood, soundless tears as the bedding around them became progressively stained red then brown, a pool of blood on the floor around them. It spread like wildfire as they began to sag, skin not tight around the bones but loose, like candle wax. The bones crumbled if they were moved until in the end, when one was cut open nothing was left but impossibly charred black, a liquid mess where fat and organs had once been and when the eyes were opened only a pool of jellied blood and pus remained. Nothing worked, no remedies, no old wives tales, no aid as the village was cut off to stop the spread.  
  
Now nothing grows there. The trees wither. The grass lies scorched. Weeds and vines tangle around crumbling gravestones. Rotting signs sink deeper into the earth with each passing year, black paint and brown blood telling all to stay away, that death has claimed this place. Blackened bones remain where they are in decaying buildings, a town claimed by what they called the melting plague. How was this story told? Some fled, one or two who smuggled letters out. Some survived too - it's how any story is told, survivors slowly telling their tales when they're safe enough. And some who go to the same place, who are foolhardy and do not heed the warnings or from water infected from the young women they drowned.   
  
I am the former, one of the few who watched all around me die. I am a survivor of the melting plague who witnessed horrors, boarded up buildings to keep others out, staked in signs and burned all my possessions so that nothing would pass it on. I know this will lurk in my blood from the night fevers, the frequent nosebleeds and coughs so I move on as much as I can, leaving copies of this tale to you dear reader so that once the sickness takes a hold and kills me that there will be records. Burn the sufferers first and save yourself, it is the only way. Burn them all. Burn their things, the buildings they have lived in, the things they have touched. Burn it all before it burns you.


End file.
